1. Field of the Invention
The invention is in the field of communications networks.
2. Description of the Background Art
There are several communications technologies in which the called party subscribes to a specialized service and pays for all incoming calls. These are both two way systems, such as cellular telephone service, and one way systems, such as paging. In these systems, once the subscriber has given his electronic address (e.g. telephone number) to a caller or sender, that person can place calls to the subscriber until the subscriber changes that address for everyone.
Communications carriers can restrict access to their networks through the use of access codes or PINs (personal identification numbers). U.S. Pat. No. 4,189,475, issued Dec. 11, 1979 discloses one way of limiting access to a paging system to those callers that can supply a properly coded signal.
In many situations it would be desirable for the called party (or receiver) to be able to control, on an individual basis, who can have access to his pager, cellular telephone or other communications terminal device. For example, in the financial industry, investment portfolio managers for large financial institutions are, often, besieged by calls from securities sales representatives who want to present new investment opportunities. The portfolio manager may have established relationships with a small set of representatives, based on prior experience. Those managers would find it helpful if there were some way of subscribing to a cellular telephone or paging service and only permitting that small set of representatives to have direct access to his cellular telephone or pager, and permitting the manager to change the network's treatment of one particular representative without affecting the others' access. These needs are satisfied by the following receiver-controlled communications architecture.